Algeria's parliament has unanimously passed a landmark law declaring France’s colonisation of the country a crime, demanding a formal apology and reparations.

The legislation also criminalises the glorification of French colonialism, which resulted in the deaths of at least 1.5 million Algerians during the war of independence between 1954 and 1962.

Lawmakers on Thursday evening celebrated the vote, draped in national colours and chanting “long live Algeria”, signalling a national reckoning with France’s brutal colonial legacy.

The law holds France “legally responsible” for the “tragedies it caused” and asserts that “full and fair” compensation is an “inalienable right of the Algerian state and people”.

France invaded Algeria in 1830 and remained in the country until 1962. Its rule involved mass killings, the relegation of native Algerian Muslims to second-class subjects, torture and deportations.

French President Emmanuel Macron has previously described France’s colonisation as a “crime against humanity”, but he has stopped short of offering an apology.

Far-right parties in France, including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), have consistently resisted acknowledgement of colonial atrocities.

Meanwhile, Algeria has also demanded the return of the 16th-century bronze cannon Baba Merzoug, a historic relic of Algiers taken by French forces in 1830 and now located in Brest, France.

France has previously repatriated the decapitated heads of 24 Algerian fighters killed while resisting colonial rule. The skulls belonging to 19th-century Algerian resistance fighters were taken to France as trophies and displayed in a museum in Paris.

Algeria hosted a conference of African states last month to press for reparations. Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf said legal measures would ensure restitution is neither “a gift nor a favour”.

The legislation lists the "crimes of French colonisation", including nuclear tests, extrajudicial killings, "physical and psychological torture", and the "systematic plundering of resources".

It states that "full and fair compensation for all material and moral damages caused by French colonisation is an inalienable right of the Algerian state and people".

The move comes at a time of diplomatic friction between Paris and Algiers that began last year when France officially backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region, where Algeria supports the pro-independence Polisario Front.

Several events have since exacerbated tensions, such as the conviction and imprisonment of the French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, who was ultimately pardoned following German intervention.

While the move is largely symbolic, it is still politically significant especially at a time when the two countries are embroiled in a major diplomatic crisis.